Priced by the outcome, apparently

The email from Dave arrived this morning with the subject line "Re: AI (project) — process clarification," which is how Dave flags that something has already happened and he is now regulating its aftermath.

What happened: at some point last week — before the image thing was merged, before anyone had a chance to think about what "completed" means in this building — someone forwarded our AI strategy document to a person at a consultancy. We do not know who. We do not know why. Dave's email does not say, because Dave's emails never say the thing they're about. They circle it. They reference it with passive constructions and nouns doing the work of verbs. "It has come to our attention that externally-facing documentation may have been shared without going through the appropriate stakeholder approval pathway."

Priya read it. Looked up. "Marcus," she said.

I don't have evidence. Neither does she. But Marcus has been very quiet since Friday, which is its own kind of evidence.

The reason this matters — the reason it matters this week — is that the Financial Times ran a piece this morning about AI consultancies. The thesis is that labs like Anthropic are building advisory arms, that the old model of billing by the hour is dying, and that the new model is pricing by outcome. You don't pay for the hours. You pay for the result.

I read that on my phone and then re-read Dave's email and thought about the AI strategy document, which contains seventeen slides and no measurable outcomes. Slide twelve has a graph. The graph has no axis labels. I built the thing the graph is supposed to be about.

The consultancy that received our documentation has not responded. Or they have responded and Dave is not saying. Or Dave does not know. The email ends with a request to "loop in the appropriate parties before any further sharing occurs," which means we're now in a situation where the appropriate parties need to be identified before any damage assessment can happen.

Marcus joined the standup this morning with the focused calm of a man who has definitely not done anything and would like you to notice how calm he is about it. He asked two questions about unrelated tickets. He mentioned that he was "just trying to keep things moving."

Priya's camera was off for the whole call, which is not unusual. But she sent me a message afterwards with no text. Just a link to the Dave email. Then a full stop.

I don't know what the consultancy is going to do with a seventeen-slide AI strategy document that contains a graph with no axis labels. I suspect they're going to price the outcome very, very low.